Source height and contact with terrestrial soil drive transplanted epiphyte performance

Epiphytes are characterized by their ability to survive without a root connection to the ground, but many basic life-history traits and ecological trade-offs of this unique aerial growth habit remain largely uncharacterized. Mortality causes are still not well understood, but falling from the host tree has been suggested as a leading cause of epiphyte mortality and community dynamics. Little empirical evidence exists for why epiphytes do not survive when forced to become terrestrial, and few studies exist that transplant epiphytes between high- and low-forest strata to test trade-offs between thriving in canopy environments and survival in the forest understory.
Here, we experimentally test two hypotheses regarding the drivers of epiphyte mortality in a cloud forest of central Panama. We test whether simple contact with terrestrial soil is deleterious to epiphytes, preliminarily testing the Epiphyte Enemy Escape Hypothesis, and test the Vertical Niche Differentiation Hypothesis, wherei..., Data were collected in 2017-2018 by MES & JAO in the Santa Fe National Park, Veraguas, Panama. Survival, number of leaves, and health status (on a scale of 0–2), of 270 epiphytes transplanted at 0, 1, or 2m were tracked for 77 weeks, ~weekly or biweekly and then less frequently later on. This dataset consists of the wide-form data summarized to individual epiphytes at the end of the 77-week experiment., R, R Studio